National monument becoming watershed moment

Local officials face off against environmentalists

Map courtesy of Grand Canyon Wildlands Council

Hubble Ray Smith
Kingman Daily Miner

KINGMAN - Anyone who has visited the Grand Canyon easily recognizes that it's one of the world's great natural wonders and must be protected.

But what about the vast stretches of forest and desert surrounding Grand Canyon National Park that contain some of the world's richest uranium deposits and provide grazing for cattle?

Mohave County elected officials and congressional representatives of Arizona are pushing back against the Sierra Club and other environmentalists who want to take down 1.7 million acres of federal land for the Grand Canyon Watershed National Monument.

They're opposed to forming the proposed national monument by presidential executive order, rather than by congressional action.

Creating a new and enormous national monument amounts to a "significant federal land grab," Mohave County Sheriff Jim McCabe said. It would add federal regulations to any use of the public land, including ranching, hunting, fishing and recreational activity.

"We're looking at this going from a wilderness area that allows all those things to a sanctuary that stops all those things," McCabe told the Daily Miner. "You're allowed to walk on it and that's it."

McCabe wants to know who's going to be responsible for fire protection, and what happens to Mohave County's water rights currently in place.

"It is just this sort of federal overreach that has led to proposals for states to assume control of huge areas of public land in the American West," McCabe said. "Creation of vast new national monuments not by congressional debate and action, but by presidential executive order, even while lawful, would contribute further to distrust of the federal action."

A national monument is a permanent designation for public land that can be established either by Congress or directly by the president. The Antiquities Act, signed into law in 1906, gives the president the authority to protect valuable public lands for conservation purposes by designating them as national monuments.

The proposed Grand Canyon Watershed National Monument includes the North Kaibab and Tusayan districts of the Kaibab National Forest, as well as public lands in the Arizona Strip, all managed by the U.S. Forest Service and BLM.

"The monument designation will include only public lands, so there is no land grab," said Sandy Bahr, director of Sierra Club's Grand Canyon Chapter. "Private and state trust lands will not be part of the proposed monument."

Sens. John McCain and Jeff Flake, both R-Ariz., have written letters to President Barack Obama opposing the monument designation. They say it would restrict land managers and private property owners from forest thinning, which could increase fire danger. It would also ban hunting, making wildlife management difficult.

Bahr countered that previous monument declarations by the president included language that makes it clear that the state retains its authority to manage wildlife. They do not limit hunting and fishing, she said.

Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, along with McCain and Flake, introduced a bill in May to prevent the president from changing federal water-rights designation of lands declared to be national monuments.

Monumental support

Proponents of the watershed say it remains at risk from threats such as toxic uranium mining and the logging of old-growth forest.

Bahr of the Sierra Club said the watershed covers some "spectacular" public lands, including portions of the Kaibab National Forest, House Rock Valley and the Kaibab-Paunsagunt Wildlife Corridor, a key wildlife habitat the Kaibab squirrel, the northern goshawk, the Kaibab-Paunsagunt mule deer herd, mountain lion, and the endangered California condor.

The lands are distinguished by rugged cliffs, pine forests, deep canyons and grasslands, and they provide clean drinking water for millions of people downstream who depend on the Colorado River.

Geologists warn that uranium mining could deplete and contaminate aquifers that discharge into the Grand Canyon, and that cleaning them up would be next to impossible.

"Uranium is radioactive and toxic," Bahr said. "Uranium mining has a big impact, contaminating land and waters, including on the Navajo Nation and in Grand Canyon National Park itself."

The Orphan Mine, on the South Rim in Grand Canyon National Park, has contaminated Horn Creek and still leaches radioactive waste into the creek, she said. The National Park Service has spent more than $15 million of American taxpayers' dollars to pay for the cleanup, she noted. There are hundreds of abandoned uranium mines on Navajo lands that still need to be cleaned up.

Protecting the land from mining is a "non-issue" as the BLM has placed a 20-year moratorium on new claims, and there's very little logging taking place in the area, said Tom Britt, retired from Arizona Game and Fish in Flagstaff.

"It's about control over restoration and protection of the forest," Britt said. "What we need to do is look to see if it's a problem. No. The area is already adequately administered by the U.S. Forest Service and BLM. So all we're doing is ratcheting up administrative overhead in that area, which is not needed. What is the intent? To restrict activities?"

People can say hunting is not going to be restricted, but once the land is designated a national monument, there will be a management plan and "the devil will be in the details," Britt said.

A contingent of 36 Democratic state senators and representatives sent a letter to President Obama in March urging him to designate the Grand Canyon watershed as a national monument.

"Arizona has a rich history of presidents taking action to protect its natural wonders, including early on the protection of Grand Canyon and Petrified Forest by President Theodore Roosevelt," the letter stated. "We ask that you now look to Grand Canyon's watershed on the lands north and south of Grand Canyon National Park for a new national monument."

National monument designation does not affect private or state lands or private property rights. It provides for continued existing activities, including public access, rights-of-way, sightseeing, mountain biking, hiking, wildlife viewing, birding, hunting, fishing, and many other activities, including traditional tribal access.

As legislators pointed out in their letter, all of these cultural, economic and natural assets are at risk from "harmful" uranium mining.

Among other groups supporting the Grand Canyon Watershed National Monument are the Arizona Wilderness Coalition; Grand Canyon Wildlands Council; Grand Canyon River Guides; Environment Arizona; and Northern Arizona Audubon Society.

"Public lands belong to all of us, and as a consequence of that shared ownership and shared responsibility, we can't allow a handful of special interest groups with an agenda cloaked in economic recovery and jobs to dominate the conversation as to what happens to these special places," said U.S. Rep. Raul Grijalva, D-Ariz.

Economic impact

The Grand Canyon attracts about 4.5 million visitors a year, and generates nearly $800 million for the state and local economies.

The U.S. Department of Interior's 2012 decision to ban more than 1 million acres of public lands from future uranium mining is detrimental to the growth of the local economy, Mohave County Supervisor Buster Johnson said. The decision was overturned in April in U.S. District Court.

Uranium mining would bring $29.4 billion to the local economy over more than 40 years, employing 1,078 workers with a $40 million annual payroll, according to a 2009 report from Tetra Tech of Golden, Colo. Local governments would receive $9.5 million in claims payments and fees.

"It's shutting down the use of our natural resources," Johnson said. "Uranium mining could kick off the economy for years to come, plus we need it for the security of the nation. They always bring up how it's ruining the Grand Canyon. Nothing is close to the Grand Canyon."

The uranium veins are not that large, more like "crop circles" in a small, localized area of the desert, Johnson noted. The footprint of disturbed land is small, and after reclamation efforts, you can't tell where it's been, he said.

Anti-mining forces have pushed the Department of Interior to change the rules on mining claims so that exploration would not be allowed unless a company could prove before the fact that economically-viable mineral resources exist.

"It depends on the price of uranium and the price to bring it out," Johnson said.

Existing mining claims would not be affected by the monument designation. However, lands currently under the BLM's 20-year moratorium would be permanently protected from mining.

"Our economy is not going to recover with traditional manufacturing jobs," Johnson said. "What we need to do is go back to our roots that led to Arizona being developed, and that is mining."

Federal Court: One Million Acres Near Grand Canyon Protected From Mining

The Grand Canyon (Shutterstock)

by Ari Phillips
Climate Progress

In early October, an Arizona federal judge upheld the Obama Administration’s 2012 withdrawal of over one million acres of federal lands surrounding Grand Canyon National Park from uranium mining. Originally imposed by then-Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar, the mining industry challenged the ban arguing that the 700-page Environmental Impact Statement was inadequate, failed to address “scientific controversies”, and was unconstitutional.

With the court’s decision to uphold the Department of Interior’s (DIO) decision, the lands around the Grand Canyon will be closed to the exploration and development of uranium mining claims for 20 years, thus protecting the Colorado River watershed and several sacred Native American sites. According to the government’s study, removing the ban would mean that 26 new uranium mines and 700 uranium exploration projects could be developed.

According Roger Clark, air quality and clean energy director at the Grand Canyon Trust, the ruling affirms conclusions by five federal agencies, including scientists from the U.S. Geological Survey — that uranium mining poses unacceptable risks to Grand Canyon’s water, wildlife, and people.

“Uranium mines threaten hundreds of the Grand Canyon seeps and springs that provide precious water to thousands of desert-dwelling species,” wrote Clark. “Every new mine sacrifices cultural sites and fragments wildlife habitat, polluting the park with dirt roads, dust, heavy machinery, noise, off-road drilling rigs, power lines, and relentless truck traffic.”

Due to the sheer size and remoteness of the landscape, the EIS authors adopted a “cautious and careful approach” to assessing the potential impacts of uranium mining. They ultimately found that “the risk of groundwater contamination from uranium mining was low, but that the possible consequences of such contamination were severe.”

Arizona federal district court judge David G. Campbell found this approach warranted, writing that “the Court can find no legal principle that prevents the DIO from acting in the face of uncertainty,” and that the Secretary of the Interior had the authority to “err on the side of caution in protecting a national treasure — Grand Canyon national park.”

When President Theodore Roosevelt created the Grand Canyon Preserve in 1906 he didn’t allow mining on much of the land, but mines were opened on land surrounding the canyon. Often on Native American lands, including the Havasupai and Navajo, these mines have become dangerous radioactive sites. There are over 500 abandoned uranium mines on Navajo territory and the federal government is still working with the Navajo to determine the best way to address the issue. According to the EPA, potential health effects include lung cancer from inhalation of radioactive particles, as well as bone cancer and impaired kidney function from exposure to radionuclides in drinking water.

“In sum, this decision supports a precautionary approach to mineral withdrawals,” wrote Hillary M. Hoffmann, an environmental law professor at Vermont Law School. “It affirms the agency’s choice, ‘when faced with uncertainty due to a lack of definitive information, and a low risk of significant environmental harm,’ to temporarily withdraw land from mineral entry before conducting a National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) review.”

Hoffman writes that while this may run counter to general policy underlying NEPA, in this instance the Bureau of Land Management’s (BLM) actions prevented the development of thousands of uranium claims until the agency could fully study the impacts of those claims and determine whether to make a full withdrawal.

“As the district court noted, if the BLM waited to act until after the NEPA review process was complete, the claims may have become vested and at that point, it would have been too late to protect the Colorado River watershed and the Havasupai sacred sites,” she writes.

When Salazar first banned this block of 633,547 acres of public lands and 360,002 acres of National Forest land from mining in 2012, a number of politicians objected, including U.S. Senators Orrin Hatch (R-UT), John McCain (R-AZ), John Barrasso (R-WY), and Mike Lee (R-UT). Sen. Hatch said mining the land “poses no environmental threat” and that the announcement was another sign that the Obama Administration “is one of the most anti-American energy presidencies in history.”

Fast-forward two years later and there are currently 13 candidates up for election in November who want to sell or seize public lands for drilling, mining, or logging and seven senators not up for reelection, including four Arizonans: Sen. McCain, Sen. Jeff Flake, U.S. Rep. Trent Franks, and State Rep. Andy Tobin.

The uranium mining companies have 60 days to appeal Judge Campbell’s decision to the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals and are likely to do so, according to the Center For Biological Diversity.

Groups file lawsuit to stop mining near Grand Canyon

Suzanne Adams
Kingman Daily Miner


KINGMAN - New mining jobs in the Arizona Strip area may be put on hold. The Center for Biological Diversity, the Grand Canyon Trust and the Grand Canyon Chapter of the Sierra Club filed a lawsuit Nov. 16 challenging a Bureau of Land Management permit for the Arizona 1 Mine.

"I'm very disappointed," said Mohave County Supervisor Gary Watson when he heard of the lawsuit. "It's absolutely absurd to me to lock up one of the richest deposits of uranium in the continental United States."

"As far as we're concerned we have all the necessary permits," said Denison Mines Corp. President and CEO Ron Hochstein, which owns the uranium mine. The company is not named in the lawsuit.

The mine is located 45 miles south of Fredonia and north of the Grand Canyon National Park. It is one of three mines owned by Denison within the boundary of a 1 million-acre area south and north of the Grand Canyon that the federal government is considering withdrawing from all mining for the next 20 years.

The company is still working on air quality permits for the other mining claims it has in the area. At this time, the federal government is not allowing any new mining claims in the area.

In their lawsuit, the conservation groups are claiming that the BLM failed to update a 1988 environmental assessment before issuing a permit to Denison in September.

"The mine has been down for more than a decade," said Roger Clark of the Grand Canyon Trust. It would be prudent to re-evaluate the area, he said. New information has been collected about the area's groundwater and endangered species, and changes to BLM management policies have happened since the mine was closed in 1992, he said.

The conservation groups are also claiming that the BLM did not examine the validity of mine's claim and did not request a new plan of operation for the mine.

The conservation groups state in a news release that the mine's old operation plan expired when it was closed, and the company never established that there was a viable uranium deposit in the area, which is required in order to file a mining claim.

All claims pertaining to the mine have been kept in good standing since the mine was staked in the 1980s, Hochstein said.

The conservation groups have not requested a halt to any mining activity in the area, but they may in the future, Clark said.

Watson said he agrees that mining should not be allowed in the Grand Canyon National Park, but the Arizona 1 Mine is outside of park limits and Denison has met all of the permit qualifications.

According to company's Web site, the mine would employ 32 people and cost $2.3 million to get started. It would mine begin mining in the first quarter of 2010. The company plans to get about 857,000 pounds of uranium ore over the next three years and is expecting to sell it for between $53 and $65 per pound.

Ariz. governor opposes halt on new mining claims

Associated Press



PHOENIX — Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer objects to a ban on filing new mining claims on nearly 1 million acres of federal land in northern Arizona for two years while a permanent prohibition is under study.

Most of the Bureau of Land Management and National Forest land covered by a July order is in the Arizona Strip located north of Grand Canyon National Park. The rest is located south of the canyon.

There's been a flurry of new mining claims, including for uranium.

Brewer sent Salazar a letter Friday saying adequate environmental protections are in place and that modern-day mining exploration creates "minimal impact to the land."

She also says economic impacts, energy independence and national security considerations support continued exploration.

Interior halts uranium mining near Grand Canyon

Salazar bars new claims on 1 million acres for environmental impact study

Conservationists contend mining leaves the Grand Canyon vulnerable to environmental damage and that no new operations should be proposed when the old mining sites haven't been cleaned up. (John Moore / Getty Images)

The Associated Press

WASHINGTON - The Interior Department announced Monday it is temporarily barring the filing of new mining claims, including for uranium, on nearly 1 million acres near the Grand Canyon.

The land is being set aside for two years so the department can study whether it should be permanently withdrawn from mining activity, according to a notice published in the Federal Register online. The notice covers 633,547 acres under the control of the Bureau of Land Management and 360,002 acres in Kaibab National Forest.

The announcement comes ahead of Tuesday's congressional hearing on a bill to set aside more than 1 million acres of federal lands north and south of the canyon. The bill's sponsor, Democratic Rep. Raul Grijalva of Arizona, and environmental groups had been looking to Interior Secretary Ken Salazar for temporary protections at the Grand Canyon while the legislation is pending.

The announcement drew an immediate objection from the mining industry. National Mining Association Vice President Luke Popovich said current laws and regulations are effective for protecting the environment from mining activity.

"This decision appears on its face to be wholly unjustified and even dumbfounding in view of the near 10 percent jobless rate," Popovich said.

Environmentalists applauded the decision.

"This decisive action to protect the Grand Canyon sends an important signal that President Obama is committed to prioritizing the public interest when it comes to managing America's natural resources," said Jane Danowitz, U.S. public lands program director at the Pew Environment Group.

The Interior Department under President George W. Bush was unresponsive to efforts to ban new uranium mining claims. The House Natural Resources Committee invoked a little-used rule to stop any new claims for up to three years, but Interior officials refused to recognize the action and continued to authorize additional mining claims.

A coalition of environmental groups sued, and the U.S. Bureau of Land Management later rescinded Congress' right to withdraw lands from mining and other activities in emergencies.

Since then, environmentalists and Grijalva have been hanging their hopes on Salazar for temporary protections.

Any companion bill to Grijalva's in the Senate is unlikely to come from Arizona's two U.S. senators. Republicans John McCain and Jon Kyl told Grijalva in a letter last month that adequate protections already exist.

Conservationists contend mining leaves the Grand Canyon vulnerable to environmental damage and that no new operations should be proposed when the old mining sites haven't been cleaned up.

There are as many as 10,000 existing mining claims on BLM and U.S. Forest Service lands near the Grand Canyon for all types of hard-rock exploration. Some 1,100 uranium mining claims are within five miles of the Grand Canyon National Park.

The protections offered by Salazar won't include uranium mining claims already filed near the Grand Canyon, the official said. It's not possible to prevent existing claims under the General Mining Act of 1872 unless Congress was to appropriate money for the department to buy up the claims, he said.

Former Grand Canyon National Park Superintendent Rob Arnberger said he would welcome any protection that Salazar offers, but permanent withdrawal is the goal.

"Are we prepared to allow the landscape to be torn up adjacent to the park, to threaten the hydrological and the natural resources of that park?" Arnberger said. "My answer to that is no. Don't open it up to exploration."

Do uranium mines belong near Grand Canyon?

Mining companies stake claims on federal land adjoining the park, while opponents say drinking water will be at risk.

Mining companies are staking claims on federal land near Grand Canyon National Park. Opponents say radioactive isotopes may leach into drinking water. Mining companies, backed by the administration, say there’s no cause for concern. (Melanie Stetson Freeman – Staff/File)

By Mark Clayton
Christian Science Monitor

GRAND CANYON NATIONAL PARK, ARIZ.
On a ragged outcrop just a short walk from a Grand Canyon overlook where millions of visitors annually come to gawk at one of the world’s most stunning vistas sits the old Orphan uranium mine. Soil radiation levels around it are 450 times higher than normal. It’s encircled by a protective fence.

A sign warns: “Remain behind fence – environmental evaluation in progress.” In the canyon hundreds of feet below, another sign by gurgling Horn Creek instructs thirsty hikers not to drink its radioactive water.

Even so, Horn Creek eventually splashes its way to the canyon bottom and into the Colorado River, a vital water source for 25 million people from Las Vegas to Los Angeles to San Diego. In that mighty river, the Orphan’s radioactive dribble is diluted to insignificance.

But what if a dozen or even scores of new uranium mines were leaching uranium radioisotopes into this critical water source? That is what Arizona’s governor, water authorities in two states, scientists, environmentalists, and Congress are all worried about. Should they be?

Everybody from mining-industry officials to environmentalists agrees that the Orphan mine is a poster child for the bad old days of uranium mining going back to the 1950s. Today’s regulations and newer mining techniques make such pollution far less likely, industry officials say, though environmentalists vehemently disagree. The question remains: Is Orphan only a vision of the past – or is it a vision of the future, too?

The US Southwest may be about to find out. Driven by soaring uranium prices and fresh interest in nuclear power, mining companies have staked more than 10,600 exploratory mineral claims – most of them smaller than five acres – spread across 1 million acres of federal land adjacent to the Colorado River and Grand Canyon National Park, a federal official told Congress in June. Most are uranium claims, though some may be for other metals, observers say.

Such numbers and testimony about pollution have begun to move Congress. Following congressional hearings, the House Natural Resources Committee in late June declared an emergency withdrawal of 1 million acres from any mining claims. The federal land in question is on the north and south rims of the Grand Canyon, just outside the national park, through which the Colorado River flows.

While a federal lawsuit and injunction have temporarily stalled uranium development in the national forest on the south rim, Congress’s action is being resisted by the Bush administration on the north rim.

There, lands controlled by the Bureau of Land Management are unaffected by the lawsuit to the south and exploration claims are still being processed routinely.

One such claim, by Quaterra Alaska Inc., the US subsidiary of Vancouver-based Quaterra Resources, Inc., was approved for exploratory drilling on June 27 – just two days after the House’s Natural Resources Committee vote that should have stopped such action.

A Department of Interior spokesman says the BLM is still processing claims because the agency doesn’t consider the Congressional vote valid. In a July letter it argued that the committee didn’t have a quorum, a point disputed by the committee’s chairman and the House parliamentarian.

Mining regulations are tougher now

“They are charging forward,” says Taylor McKinnon, public lands director for the Center for Biological Diversity, an environmental group based in Tucson, Ariz.

Last month, the US Department of Energy approved 42 square miles for an expanded uranium mining program in the watershed of the Dolores River, a tributary of the Colorado. But the question of what impact dozens of new uranium mines across the entire Colorado River watershed might have – an environmental disaster or an energy bonanza with few ill effects – remains hotly debated.

“Old mines like the Orphan were mined in the 1950s under no federal regulations whatsoever,” says Eugene Spiering, vice president of exploration for Quaterra. “Most mines today are above the water table, which makes chances of leakage practically nil. What we have now is a well-regulated industry.”

Still, there has been no regionwide environmental assessment of the likely impact of a new uranium mining boom on the Colorado River, close observers say. Nor is such an evaluation apparently of much interest to federal land managers, if comments on the subject by a Department of Interior spokesman are any guide.

“We already have the Clean Water Act, the National Environmental Policy Act, and others that require comprehensive analyses before any mining is done, so there won’t be impacts to the environment,” says Chris Paolino, a spokesman for the Department of Interior. “At this time we’re still evaluating plans on an individual basis, but [a regional study is] not something I can rule out.”

“We hear from the industry and federal government that today ‘we can do it safely,’ ” says Roger Clark, air and energy director for the Grand Canyon Trust, an environmental watchdog group. “But the burden of proof is on the proponents. Somebody needs to ask, ‘What is the cumulative threat to drinking water in the Colorado River – not just from radioactivity, but from arsenic and mercury from these mines?’”

Some are asking for exactly such a study. With cities like Phoenix relying on clean Colorado River water, Arizona Gov. Janet Napolitano (D) is calling for an “overall environmental im­­pact analysis,” citing the uranium boom’s “potential to seriously harm” the water quality of Grand Canyon National Park and the Lower Colorado River.

Uranium company officials say fears about radioactive contamination are overblown. New mining methods, far tougher environmental standards, and desert-dry conditions for most mines mean minimal risk to the Colorado River and the region’s precious groundwater resources, they say.

“Yes, there were issues in the past,” says Ron Hochstein, president of Denison Mines, a Toronto-based company with at least nine mines under development in the area targeted by Congress. “But that’s not the way we do things today. We understand and know a lot more about uranium, radium, and radon and the impacts of those. So to say some things that happened in the 1950s and 1960s will happen again today is not a good comparison.”

Proven deposits are likely to be mined

Whether or not the thousands of unproven claims are ever developed, a fair number of uranium mining sites seem almost certain to reemerge. “Congress’s action only applies to unproven claims,” Mr. Clark points out, leaning against a fence at the Canyon Mine site.

Denison’s group of established mine sites – including the Canyon Mine in the Kaibab National Forest a few miles south of the park – are among those likely to reemerge. The Canyon Mine was mothballed in the 1980s – before it had even opened – because of sinking uranium prices. It is a proven site: Uranium is there. Denison must still apply for new state environmental permits in order to proceed, but expects its mines to begin opening around 2010.

Despite Horn Creek pollution, the good news is that recent studies have shown that most springs and creeks in the Grand Canyon still have good water quality: Uranium and other trace metals appear in low concentrations, according to congressional testimony.

The bad news, experts say, is that digging into the cylindrical vertical rock formations in which uranium is found – they’re called “breccia pipes” – can “mobilize” the uranium, causing it to oxidize when water from periodic downpours seeps down through the rock strata.

Indeed, the negative impact of water on uranium mines should not be minimized even in the desert, says Chris Shuey, a scientist who directs the Uranium Impact Assessment Program, a nonprofit research and information center. His research in the Churchrock area of the Navajo Nation near Gallup, N.M. – where uranium was mined and processed between 1952 and 1983 – showed statistically significant effects on human health from the elevated levels of radioactivity in the region.

While much uranium in the region does occur in formations above the water table, the bottom of the breccia pipes are located in the upper portion of the Redwall Limestone, a principal aquifer supplying springs in the Grand Canyon and wells for much of the region, Dr. Shuey told Congress in March.

“When you take uranium and the other trace elements out of their resting places in nature and expose them to the environment,” Shuey says by phone, “you expose them in higher concentrations to the environment and intensify their effects. People don’t appreciate the cumulative impact of mining in a consolidated area. There’s a very real threat.” A flash flood swept through Havasu Creek last week. That same watershed includes the Canyon Mine and numerous uranium claims.

Abe Springer, a hydrologist and researcher at Northern Arizona University at Flagstaff, has made a career studying the movement of groundwater through the Redwall and other aquifers into seeps and springs that supply not only hikers, but also most of the region’s animal life with the water they need to survive.

“Once these elements became mobile through mining activities,” Dr. Springer told Congress in his March testimony, “they would continue to be mobile through the aquifer and eventually discharge in springs impacting the human uses of water of these springs.”

Even so, some industry figures dispute any connection between the Orphan uranium mine and higher radiation in Horn Creek.

A “fact sheet” e-mailed by Quaterra’s Mr. Spiering says, regarding water pollution, that “statements that the historic operations at the Orphan Mine have been polluting Horn Creek are false.” It cites a 2004 US Geological Survey study showing dissolved uranium in a range from 8.6 to 29 parts per billion and “within the EPA levels of safe drinking water.”

Closer look at USGS study

But a closer examination of the 2004 results finds that some uranium concentrations are at the upper end of the safe range for Horn Creek.

The same study’s results for nearby Salt Creek (at 29 to 31 p.p.b.) “approached or exceeded the US Environmental Protection Agency’s drinking water standard” of 30 p.p.b., according to Shuey’s testimony to Congress.

The two creeks – Salt and Horn – also had by far the highest levels of the 20 springs and seeps tested in that study, Shuey testified. That USGS study also did not seek to assign causes of the higher radiation levels, he noted.

But the potential impact of tainted groundwater on native Americans, hikers, and local wildlife – as well as major cities downstream – are all reasons Rep. Rául Grijalva (D) of Arizona has sponsored legislation to permanently withdraw federal land around Grand Canyon National Park from uranium mining.

“I hope we’ve matured enough not to forget history,” Representative Grijalva says in a phone interview. “Protection of water quality in the Colorado River is vital to the long-term health and safety of humans and other species. We can’t afford to simply issue permits and decades from now simply dismiss the consequences as unintended.

“We should know better than that.”

Report: Abandoned Mines Threaten Health, Safety

By Derek Kravitz
Washington Post

Sam Layne, abandoned mine supervisor, looks over a derelict mine shaft in the Arizona desert off U.S. Highway 60 between Florence Junction and Superior. Layne said plans are underway to fill in the shaft.


Thousands of dangerous and deteriorating mine shafts scattered across California, Arizona and Nevada contain unhealthy levels of arsenic, lead and mercury, according to a report from the Department of Interior inspector general.

Inspectors said they visited about 45 federal parks and conservation areas with abandoned mines between March 2007 and April 2008 and found the lands to have "dangerous physical safety and serious environmental hazards."

"The potential for more deaths and injuries is ominous," the report said, because of population growth and the use of off-road vehicles.

The report cited several problem spots within the lands operated by the Bureau of Land Management and National Park Service, including a dilapidated, two-story concrete building at the American Flat Mill site, near the town of Virginia City, Nev., that is "extremely dangerous" and a known "party hangout" for local teens; thousands of open mine shafts near the Windy Point Recreation Area in Kingman, Ariz., where a 13-year-old girl died after falling into a 125-foot mine shaft over Labor Day weekend; and acidic water found at the Caselton Tailings site, near the town of Panaca, Nev., that reportedly can burn human skin on contact.

Inspectors also found health and safety problems at Death Valley National Park and the Mojave National Preserve in California; and Grand Canyon National Park in Arizona.

Several Department of Interior employees also alleged that supervisors at the Bureau of Land Management told them to ignore abandoned mine shafts that lacked fencing or warning signs and criticized employees for trying to identify contaminated sites, the report said.

Matt Spangler, a spokesman for the Bureau of Land Management, released a statement saying the agency "worked closely with the IG audit team over the last year in examining the complexities and challenges that land management agencies face in addressing hard rock abandoned mine lands (AML) impacts. The BLM accepts the recommendations and will work diligently to implement them."

Spangler noted that between 2007 and mid-year 2007, officials inventoried 5,500 sites and fixed physical safety hazards at 3,000 sites.)

The Department of Interior, acknowledging its mining safety program has been underfunded, said it has undertaken "temporary or interim measures" to mitigate hazards while "seeking additional funding to complete the needed remediation," according to the report.

The U.S. Mine Safety and Health Administration identified 33 abandoned mine deaths between 1999 and 2007 in the western United States.

In response to the report's findings, the Department of Interior and lawmakers recommended posting more warning signs and building fences to ward off visitors to dangerous mine shafts and installing sprinklers and temporary covers to reduce air and water-borne contamination at environmentally contaminated sites.

Rep. Nick J. Rahall (D-W.Va.), the chairman of the House Natural Resources Committee, said the report "paints an abysmal picture" of the efforts done to fix abandoned mines.

"It captures a snapshot of agencies that are failing to oversee abandoned hardrock mines, allowing these scarred properties to pose real and serious threats to the health and safety of Americans," Rahall said.

The committee held hearings last year to reform the Hardrock Mining Law of 1872, which regulates the bevy of mines built as gold, silver, copper and lead production in the West picked up steam in the 1850s.

Other environmental issues have been raised about old mines. Judy Pasternak of the Los Angeles Times wrote an award-winning series of articles in 2006 about the health problems caused by abandoned government uranium mines on Navajo land in the West.

Power plant proposed

Mojave Desert considered for world's biggest solar station

San Bernardino Sun

Andrew Silva, Staff Writer

The largest solar power plant in the world has been proposed for the Mojave Desert in San Bernardino County, it was announced Wednesday.

Pacific Gas & Electric reached a deal to buy power from Israel-based Solel Solar Systems, which plans to build a $2 billon plant covering nine square miles. It could be operating by 2011.

The plant would generate 533 megawatts of power, enough to power 400,000 homes.
In contrast, Southern California Edison's 2-year-old Mountainview Power Plant in Redlands generates 1,054 megawatts.

Solel is looking at three locations for the plant. One is north of the Marine Corps Air Ground Combat Center in Twentynine Palms, another is northwest of Needles, and the third is near the Nevada border between the 15 Freeway and the 40 Freeway.

Company officials hope to make a final decision on a location after an environmental review late next year or early 2009, said Vanessa Loftus, a spokeswoman for Solel.

Two sites are on land administered by the U.S. Bureau of Land Management and the third is on private land, she said.

PG&E doesn't serve this area, so power generated would go to customers from Bakersfield to the north.

The technology would be the same as that at the solar generating station at Kramer Junction, the intersection of Highway 58 and Highway 395.

Rows of curved mirrors, called troughs, concentrate the sun's energy onto a pipe carrying a liquid that can reach temperatures high enough to boil water.

For more than two decades, San Bernardino County has been the testing ground for large-scale solar projects.

Plants at Kramer Junction and Harper Dry Lake produce more than 300 megawatts of power on about 2,000 acres. Southern California Edison buys all the power from those plants.

The new solar plant would help California meet its target of getting 20 percent of its energy from renewable sources by 2010.

SCE is also aggressively pursuing contracts to buy renewable power, said Stuart Hemphill, director of renewable and alternative power.

The company recently signed a contract for 1,500 megawatts of new wind power in the Tehachapi Mountains.

A number of companies are looking to produce new clean power with California leading the way on renewable energy and its mandate to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

"There's a tremendous influx of venture capital," Hemphill said.

Though the proposed locations for the new solar plant are remote, PG&E can tap into existing transmission lines that served the coal-fired Mohave Generating Station in Laughlin, Nev.

That plant shut down at the end of 2005 after years of controversy over its effect on the air in Grand Canyon National Park.

Solar plants are appropriate for this desert area because during hot summer days, up to half the electricity consumed is used for powering air conditioning units, Loftus said.

Middle of Nowhere Is a Center of Conflict

A federal plan allows more recreation and mining in a rugged land of national monuments.



By Julie Cart, Staff Writer
Los Angeles Times



VERMILION CLIFFS NATIONAL MONUMENT, Ariz. — The 3 million acres of federal land in the Arizona Strip have their remote geography to thank for preserving their spectacular red sandstone escarpments, slot canyons, rock art and ruins of ancient pueblos.

One of the last places in the Lower 48 to be mapped, the strip, in the northwestern corner of the state, is today bypassed by major highways and mostly devoid of gas stations, hotels and other visitor services. As a result, more than 12,000 years of human history written on this rugged landscape has remained in place, undisturbed by tourism or development.

That is about to change.

Here at the backdoor of the Grand Canyon, two national monuments, Grand Canyon-Parashant and Vermilion Cliffs, are poised to absorb the effects of the explosive growth from Las Vegas to the west and St. George, Utah, to the north — two of the fastest expanding areas in the nation.

The federal agency that oversees much of the land in the Arizona Strip, the Bureau of Land Management, is preparing a long-range plan for the area that would allow uranium mining and oil and gas exploration across 96% of the lands outside the monuments.

The plan would also permit livestock grazing in the monuments and open 3,000 miles of roads to motorized recreation, including some in the monuments. A 7,100-acre "play area" for dirt bikes and all-terrain vehicles would be established. And although that area would be outside the monuments, it would be next to land set aside to protect a threatened cactus and a Native American petroglyph site.

Critics, including the Environmental Protection Agency and the local County Board of Supervisors, say the agency's plan fails to protect the two monuments with their thousands of historic and cultural sites, and exposes fragile BLM lands to nearly unrestricted livestock grazing and recreational activities.

Others say the proposal won't safeguard rare plants and animals, such as the desert tortoise and 20 species of raptors and other birds, including a colony of California condors reintroduced at Vermilion Cliffs.

"What you have in the Arizona Strip is a kind of sleepy place that has been highlighted with two monuments, but the BLM hasn't really risen to these different challenges," said Martha Hahn, a former BLM administrator with 21 years at the agency. Hahn now works with the conservation group Grand Canyon Trust.

But current BLM officials say the plan, which is four years in the works and won't be finalized for months, is a commendable effort to reconcile the agency's tradition of various uses on public land with its newer mandate to conserve national monuments.

"It's all about finding the right balance between protecting the resource and allowing the public to use the land for grazing and other activities," said Scott Florence, the BLM's district manager for the Arizona Strip.

The Arizona Strip was cut off from its surrounding area by the Grand Canyon and the Colorado River until a ferry was established in 1871, which remained the only river crossing until the first bridge was built 60 years later.

After ancient Pueblo people settled on the mesas and in the canyons, only the intrepid passed through here: Spanish friars in the 18th century, wayward mountain men, scattered trappers and, in the 19th century, Mormon families guiding wagons along the Honeymoon Trail to St. George.

In 2000, President Clinton created the Grand Canyon-Parashant National Monument, at just over 1 million acres, and the Vermilion Cliffs National Monument, at nearly 300,000 acres. The BLM manages another 1 1/2 million acres in the area that don't carry the same level of protection.

The presidential proclamations called the monuments geological treasures. The one for Vermillion Cliffs reads: "Full of natural splendor and a sense of solitude, this area remains remote and unspoiled, qualities that are essential to the protection of the scientific and historic objects it contains."

Up to now, the Arizona Strip has been administered under a 1992 management plan. The proposed plan is the first to take into account the monument designations. Much of the land within the national monuments was intended to be set aside for scientific study, but BLM budgets often fail to make room for expensive scientific analysis. To survey the sites in Grand Canyon-Parashant, for example, would cost $30 million, according to Diana Hawks, who leads the BLM's planning effort.

According to an article in the latest edition of Issues in Science and Technology, published by the National Academies and the University of Texas at Dallas, only 6% of the BLM's 260 million acres in the West have been surveyed for cultural resources. About 263,000 cultural sites have been found, according to the article, but archeologists estimate there are likely to be 4.5 million sites on BLM holdings.

The pattern is repeated here. More than 97% of the land within the monuments has not been surveyed for archeological or paleontological sites, and according to a scientific study conducted last summer, 63% of the sites in Grand Canyon-Parashant are vulnerable to damage by off-road vehicle routes, as are nearly half the sites in the more remote Vermilion Cliffs monument.

"These archeological sites are a nonrenewable resource. Once they are gone, they are gone forever, " said Peter Bungart, a Flagstaff-based archeologist who conducted last year's monument surveys. "The silent history that's on that landscape is important, unless you argue that history is not important."

The BLM's new plan concludes that none of the proposed activities in the monuments would damage resources. But critics contend that the agency can't claim that roads won't damage archeological resources, considering the BLM doesn't even know where all of the sites are.

On a recent tour of Vermilion Cliffs, Rick Moore of the Grand Canyon Trust pointed out many archeological sites near roads, especially vulnerable to vandals. He showed one site atop the Paria Plateau where a road sliced though remnants of an early pueblo, the ruin's low stone walls flanking the dirt road.

The Coconino County Board of Supervisors is particularly concerned about the web of new roads open in the monuments and the other BLM lands.

"We have ample evidence that misuse of the land in these landscapes is sometimes irreparable, and sometimes it ain't gonna be right in your lifetime," Supervisor Carl Taylor said.

Taylor said the prospect of renewed uranium mining has created a rush to stake claims on the western side of the Arizona Strip and that the activity would create even more roads.

According to the EPA, the BLM's plan would open nearly nine times more public land to off-road vehicle use.

The EPA also argued against off-road travel in desert tortoise habitat and recommended that the BLM "eliminate open motorized and mechanized cross-county travel due to substantial impacts from this activity on soils, water resources, cultural resources and wildlife."

Proponents of motorized recreation, on the other hand, fear they will lose some of the freedom they enjoyed before the monuments were created.

"What we're worried about is that traditional routes are going to be closed, somewhat arbitrarily," said Dale Grange of Hurricane, Utah, president of the Tri State ATV Club and the motorized recreation representative at BLM meetings. Grange said motorcycle and ATV rallies in the Arizona Strip draw hundreds of participants. But because of BLM restrictions, organizers have to turn people away.

The BLM's Florence said the management plan for the area, though not perfect, is the result of years of careful, ongoing study.

"We fully expect to make some changes, clarifying what the plan does in term of protecting monument objects," he said. "It needs to be more clear, building in specific details exactly how the monument objects will be protected."